Can exercise help ease depression and anxiety?
Anxiety, depression and stress may all be reduced and managed with adequate exercise and proper nutrition. But with so much conflicting advice out there, how do we know where to begin?
For many people, exercise and going to the gym is seen as a necessary chore, a way to keep fit, lose weight and keep lean. But there is so much more than exercise, keeping active and healthy eating can do for you, your body and perhaps most importantly: your mind.
The gym, for many Australians, is a place for gaining muscle, losing weight and keeping active, it’s a place of physical progress and proving to yourself and others, what your body can do. But should physical progress always be the end goal?
If you’ve answered yes, it shouldn’t be, and for a growing number of individuals, it’s not. As a professional in the fitness industry, it’s my job to work out what people want from their training, and more often than not, when I ask, ‘what do you want to achieve, although the answer tends to be something like ‘lose weight, ‘get fit and ‘increase muscle mass’, further digging almost always leads to the discovery that the person is not there just for physical gain. But for an underlying reason, that is usually related to the mind and mental health. As a society, we’re starting to realize the benefits that physical activity has not just on the body, but as a way to manage mental health.
More and more people are starting to use physical activity as a form of therapy, and science says it’s working.
Scientifically, there’s a lot more happening than just exercise=happy. On a biological level, dopamine and oxytocin are proven to increase significantly in the body after exercise. These two hormones are responsible for supporting positive moods and social connectedness. Studies show that spending just one hour a day, six days a week exercising, has the same effect on the mental health of individuals as anxiolytic, a commonly prescribed anti-anxiety medication. Not only that but exercise causes the brain to become more sensitive to the hormones serotonin and norepinephrine, which relieve feelings of depression. Endorphins are also released during exercise, which is widely known to produce positive feelings and reduce perception to pain.
With all this going on inside the body, it makes sense that we would use exercise as a form of therapy, to manage mental health and to help the recovery of people suffering from depression, anxiety and trauma.
The gym is often used as a sanctuary, a way to escape the pressures of life and do something positive for yourself. These days, there’s a lot going on in the lives that cause us stress, and often, that one hour a day people spend in the gym can be enough to escape from everything else that may be weighing them down, whether it’s the stresses of a hard day’s work, kids at home causing you grief or having an argument with someone at home.
Going to the gym and working hard allows you to test your physical limits, whether that be in weights or cardio form.
Everyone has heard of ‘taking your frustrations out in the gym’, and this saying actually has some truth to it. The gym can be used effectively as an outlet for frustration, rather than taking the stresses of the day home, making everyone at home’s life much more enjoyable.
I’ve worked closely with one of my clients, Mikaela, over the past few months. Mikaela is a huge advocate for exercise to manage mental health and she says that ‘depression, anxiety and trauma, by their very nature cause severe debilitation to an individual’s capacity to thrive in the world. When it comes to movement patterns and the ability for an individual to exercise whilst experiencing these symptoms, it can cause great difficulty due to the restrictive nature of the disorders’.
Another of my clients, who didn’t wish to be named, said that ‘the routine of going to the gym and the good feeling that comes after has helped me so much with my work, I’m more alert, focussed, and able to concentrate on what I’m doing, rather than how I’m feeling’. Physical activity has such a myriad of benefits. There’s the physical satisfaction of watching weight go down (or up), strength increase and muscles becoming more defined.
Having this level of motivation in your life can provide a positive distraction to the other goings-on in life.
The adrenaline that comes from hitting a personal best can lift you mentally for days. But not only does exercise cause a countless number of positive benefits on your body, as we’ve seen here, but it can also be used as a therapeutic tool to manage depression, anxiety, stress and many other mental issues. It clears the mind and allows us to focus and concentrate on the important things in life, to be more alert and better utilise our skills. And really, what’s there not to like about being a happier, healthier, more intelligent and integrated human?!
If you are someone you know is struggling with their mental health - there is support available. Please refer to these links for further information